


no other love (only yours)

by a_stankova



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Ballroom Scene, F/F, Post 3x07, Slow Dancing, finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24393388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_stankova/pseuds/a_stankova
Summary: 'Eve doesn’t seem to mind; doesn’t really notice anyone else, anyway. Her mindset is as it has always been: completely and utterly focused on Villanelle. The rest is inconsequential, background noise. They could very well be alone.'ORThe Ballroom Scene.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 27
Kudos: 407





	no other love (only yours)

**Author's Note:**

> Posted a little snippet of this on Twitter and it got a lot of interest, and then THOSE PICS CAME OUT, so here we are! Thanks to everyone who encouraged!  
> Title is from 'You're All I Want' by Cigarettes After Sex.

When Villanelle had asked her to meet her here, Eve hadn’t been expecting _this_.

It’s a private event – a wedding or an anniversary, Eve is not too sure. Either way, she’s able to waltz right in without preamble. The room is large, muted in dull colours. There is amiable chatter throughout, laughter in one corner, and the dancefloor plays host to a number of partners, dancing to slow music that ebbs and flows over the sound system.

And there, on the edge of the floor, is Villanelle. She sits at a table, her back to Eve, but Eve is so sure that it’s her she walks right up to her, stopping short just before she reaches her because holy fuck.

Her suit is vibrant, bright swirling patterns that look incredible on her, but it’s her hair that Eve is struck by. Has she never seen it down before?

Eve is enthralled, doesn’t think to hide this when she blurts “hi.”

Villanelle’s head turns in her direction – her face looks softer in this light, but no less perfect. “Hi,” she murmurs, smiling in a way that tells Eve she is a heady combination of relieved and tired.

Eve almost falters. She’s not sure of the last time it had been this easy – to say ‘hi’ and have that be the start of something other than catastrophe.

Still, there’s time. It’s them, after all.

Eve removes her jacket and drapes it over the back of the empty chair at Villanelle’s table, and no sooner has she sat down than Villanelle is speaking:

“Konstantin?” she asks, concern evident in her tone.

“I don’t know,” Eve admits. “An ambulance came for him.”

Villanelle blinks. “So he was not…?” She trails off, but Eve fills the gap in her mind.

“No,” Eve assures her, as gently as she can. “He was still alive.”

Villanelle nods once, the lines in her forehead smoothing out again. A bubble of laughter escapes her, choked and short, but Eve doesn’t think to question her about it.

Instead, she asks something different. “Why did you want to meet here?”

“I am supposed to be working. They are watching me.”

“They?”

At Villanelle’s deadpan look, Eve’s brain catches up. “Oh.” A beat passes. “How’s your promotion working out?”

Villanelle laughs at that. The sound is bitter. It tells Eve all she needs to know. “Internal promotions are bullshit.”

“Why are they watching you?”

“I fucked up,” Villanelle shrugs, something dark crossing her face briefly. “More than once. I suppose you could call this,” she gestures to the room around them, “my pending third strike.”

“You’re going to do it again?”

“I hate even numbers.”

“Villanelle,” Eve sighs, exasperated, by everything. “Can you not be cryptic? We’ve done the merry-go-round, I think we’re both past it.”

Villanelle hums thoughtfully, and smiles. “I suppose.”

“What were you and Konstantin doing in Aberdeen?”

“He came to collect me,” Villanelle tells her, gaze fixed on the dancefloor once more. “We’re leaving.”

“Are you freelancing again?”

“No, Eve,” Villanelle sighs, her hands clenching together in her lap. “We’re going away. For good.”

Eve’s heart thuds. “I don’t understand.”

Villanelle turns to her then, with the softest of smiles. “I thought this would be romantic. A nice way for us to say goodbye.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” 

At the grave panic on Eve’s face, Villanelle’s smile falters, and she turns back to the dancefloor, ignoring the stab of pain in her chest.

“They look happy, don’t they?” she asks Eve, somewhat dreamily. “They look free.”

Eve can barely pay attention, blood thrumming in her ears as she stares hard at Villanelle, something coiling inside her chest that feels an awful lot like heartache. It leaves her breathless, angry, desperate, devoid of so many answers and yet nothing would make sense anyway, without her.

Without Villanelle here, Eve is directionless, alone. What did it mean that Villanelle is going away for good? What would that mean for their lives, for everything they’d been through, everything they’d lost? How could the world possibly conceive to keep turning, if now, after everything, they were parted once again?

Eve spends one more minute watching Villanelle watch the dancers, before she stands abruptly, chair scraping on the carpet.

“Dance with me.”

Villanelle turns to her, brow furrowed. “What?”

Eve steels herself, forces her nerve not to waver as she motions to the dancefloor. “Come and dance with me.”

Villanelle blinks, and then her smile is a smirk and oh god she’s going to make a joke, she’s going to say no, she’s –

“Dancing is for free people,” Villanelle says, and _oh,_ Eve realises, with startling clarity. She’s nervous _,_ but more than that she’s _shy._

“So let’s pretend,” Eve implores her.

Villanelle looks at Eve’s proffered hand then for a moment, before standing. Eve steps around the table, onto the dancefloor, and snags Villanelle’s fingers in her own. 

“Are you leading, or am I?”

Couples dance around them – experts in their own way, experienced. Their steps are well-placed, their movements fluid, and they turn like cogs in a machine, well-oiled and graceful.

But Villanelle is bad at dancing, and even if she were good she still doesn’t think she’d make any attempt to lead Eve in the choreographed mob around them. 

Eve doesn’t seem to mind; doesn’t really notice anyone else, anyway. Her mindset is as it has always been: completely and utterly focused on Villanelle. The rest is inconsequential, background noise. They could very well be alone.

“We need to talk,” Eve sighs out, her breath a half-laugh as she steps into Villanelle’s space, hands sliding up onto strong shoulders. “About everything, about all of it. I–”

“I know,” Villanelle murmurs, arms snaking around Eve’s waist to hold her closer; an anchoring gesture, keeping both of them still, keeping both of them here in this moment because god knows it’s been a long time coming. “But maybe, for right now,” and her voice grows softer then, and her eyes shine harder, and she’s the most beautiful thing in Eve’s world – she’s the _centre_ of Eve’s world – and Eve feels the wave through every part of her when Villanelle leans in, ending her thought in the air between them:

“ _Just kiss me_ ,” Villanelle whispers, a breath away from her lips, and that wave Eve feels is all-encompassing, drives her forward, lets her put her search for answers on hold while she seeks new discoveries instead; in soft blonde hair, in the sharp line of her jaw, in the warm cavern of her mouth where Eve thinks she might feel most at home. 

It’s nothing like the bus – this is real and probably the most patient they’ve ever allowed themselves to be. When Villanelle’s hands tighten, when her kiss deepens, Eve is not afraid, or consumed with the urge to attack, or flee. Things are different now, they’re the same, they’re _equal_ , and Eve is more sure than ever – she mewls softly, curls her tongue and smiles when Villanelle’s breath hitches. Discoveries, she thinks.

When she explores further, compelled by the same wave to do so, Villanelle’s head tilts, inviting her mouth down to the slope of her neck. “ _Eve_ ,” she gasps, eyelids fluttering, and Eve finds that she likes that, likes eliciting this reaction from her. Below her mouth, Villanelle’s skin is soft, warm, and there, at the nape, clings her perfume, trace elements of the last time they’d been this close. Eve kisses her there, inhales and wraps her arms around her, and she holds, committing the scent to memory before it faded again.

Maybe this time, it won’t fade. This is different, after all. 

“You can’t leave,” Eve whispers, voice thick with a million words she has to stifle.

Villanelle’s grip on her tightens then, reflexively. “I have to,” she sighs out. “They’ll kill me, Eve – ”

“No,” Eve interrupts her firmly, taking her hand and letting them sway softly, their temples side by side. “I don’t mean that.”

“Then what–”

“Leave the Twelve,” Eve whispers into her hair, eyes closed as her thumb strokes across her back softly, as their movements all but still. “ _Just don’t leave me._ ”

Villanelle’s breath hitches against her. Eve feels her hands tighten. “You mean that?”

And it’s jarring, how sure Eve feels, how Rome feels like a distant memory, another lifetime ago. She supposes it is. But she knows without question that this feeling, this wave inside her, is not rooted in fear, like it probably ought to be. It is inexplicable, powerful beyond words, expect for perhaps one.

“I mean that,” she promises her, head craned in a frantic, pleading nod, one she hopes conveys everything running through her mind. “I’ll help you, however I can. Just…” 

The sentence goes unfinished, lost in the vacuum of space around them. But Villanelle feels Eve’s intentions in the way she holds her, the way their bodies move together; feels it in the kisses she presses to her hair, to her neck, and to her mouth.

When the moment ends – because it was always bound to – Villanelle steps backwards, into the soft glow of the spotlight, as if for appraisal, or validation. Eve stares after her, spellbound, vaguely aware of the crowd around them, though they appear blurred and distant, hundreds of miles away. She watches as Villanelle shucks her jacket; she follows the slide of it down her arms, over her hands, finally allowing confusion to settle when those hands reach out to her, offering the jacket for her to take.

Her brow furrows, and she looks up, stricken. Villanelle’s eyes have changed, now glazed, and Eve can practically see her inner turmoil as it storms across her face, vivid and violent.

She’s decided something, Eve thinks, making no move to take the jacket from her just yet. She’s working something out, she’s unsure, she’s –

“The inner pocket,” Villanelle tells her softly, her hands clenching nervously around her jacket. “If you are serious about helping me.”

She watches the lining of Eve’s throat then; it bobs, straining harshly as indecision and panic flits across her face. She’d had the same look in Rome. Somewhere inside Villanelle’s chest, something constricts, bracing for the sting of rejection.

It doesn’t come. Eve takes the jacket, lets their fingers brush in a silent gesture, a promise she seals with a smile.

“What will you do?” Eve asks her.

And fuck, this _is_ different. It’s a step forward, it’s light at the end of the tunnel, it’s _them,_ together at long fucking last. Villanelle can’t help the sigh that escapes her, or the smile that shines through her teeth. “What I always do,” she shrugs, eyes glinting as her bones comes alive, adrenalised for the first time since Russia. 

“Cause chaos.”

Eve is so unsurprised by this answer that she laughs, subconsciously bringing Villanelle’s jacket closer to her chest. “Do it carefully.”

“Of course.”

Is this what hope feels like? Was this true excitement, organically found, not the byproduct of murder? Could it really be that Eve, and Eve alone, is able to fill the void inside her? Replace the empty gratification of her kills with something tangible, something genuine?

“I’ll see you soon,” Eve says, and _god_ , Villanelle longs to tell her that she loves her. That she never stopped loving her, that she’ll always love her, that even if Eve had walked away again she still would’ve spent the rest of her life –

“I’ll see you soon,” Villanelle whispers, and she watches Eve go back to their table to gather her things. It hurts, like it always does, but it’s different now, she reminds herself, as she stands in the middle of the ballroom, fists clenched, watching Eve’s hair drape wildly over her shoulders. The smell of her curls will stay with her forever, even if Eve were to cut and run right now.

Eve turns before she goes. Still smiling, and still beautiful, and Villanelle’s whole chest swells.

Yes, she thinks, things are different now. Things are better. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @a_stankova on Twitter – come say hi! :)


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